Foster Hall
by strxbe
Summary: College AU- Matt and Mello become roommates in a dorm in their first year of college. They start out as simple friends/acquaintances, but as time goes on and they get to know each other a little more, those feelings start to get a little deeper and a little stronger. Starting out as T-rating, will progress into M. Eventually will have Yaoi/Smut.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N** Haven't written for Matt and Mello (or written in general) in ages so bear with me as I get the hang of it again! This first chapter is sort of an introduction, since I hope for this fic to be quite long. They'll start out as acquaintances and then progress from there. If you've read my old MxM fic titled "Punch" on my old account 'renaxxakat', this is sort of a revamp/replacement so I might reuse a couple little things that happened in that fic hehe. So if you've read that one, you might recognize some references/similarities!

I also hope to update this fic a minimum of once a week.

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_Not too bad… bigger than I thought it'd be. _

Mello had been the first to arrive to the dorm and thus had the chance to look it over without having a stranger breathing down his neck or getting in his way. It was small, like he'd expected, but he'd always imagined that dorms were… much more cramped and he'd assumed that he wouldn't have much room for things other than his bed and perhaps a personal desk. The way the room was set up though included a twin-sized bed against opposite walls with a window on the wall between them. There was enough space to fit end tables or a pad on the floor between the beds if they had a guest and in the remaining area of the room there were two small desks and two small dressers on their respective sides. He moved his mouth to the side in thought as he mentally rearranged the furniture to accommodate to his TV and other things he'd brought that would need places. Though, he decided he'd wait to retrieve those things from his car until after he'd met his new roommate and they'd worked out something together.

_Roommate…_

The blonde took in a deep breath and chose the bed on the left, tossing down his heavy backpack and then dropping to sit comfortably on the edge. He really hoped that he'd have something in common with whoever would be joining him and that the semester wouldn't end up awkward or annoying between them. He also hoped that said roommate wouldn't be some sporty asshole or a rude, extreme party-goer. Not that he disliked going to parties or anything like that, but having someone who was constantly irresponsible and rowdy would get on his nerves very quickly. Though, he supposed he'd just have to wait and see what happened.

In the mean time, he stood and carried his bag over to the dresser closest to him and began unpacking his clothing. He didn't have a whole lot, so the task went by quickly and he simply left the backpack next to it on the floor when he was finished and then returned to his bed to mess around on his phone and such as he waited.

Matt was… _almost_ lost. He wasn't admitting to himself that he'd gotten turned around a couple times while trying to find the correct dorm and that the reason he was sitting in his car in one of the parking lots was because he was looking up the name of his building name and where exactly it was on campus.

He finished off his cigarette with one long, last drag and flicked the butt out the window, pushing his sunglasses up onto his head afterwards as he breathed out the smoke and looked back down at the names and directions on his phone.

_Foster_

Once he'd found the name, he flipped back over to the campus layout and found where the building was supposed to be. He seemed to only be a couple streets over, so with a cough he put his phone back in his lap and put the car in reverse, backing out of the parking space and heading back on his way. With everything still fresh in his mind, it only took him a few minutes to locate the building and park his car. Though, he took a moment to prepare himself before actually making the effort to begin moving in. Not that he had much to carry in, really… it was more of a mental preparation. Matt wasn't exactly all that good at making new friends or… starting up conversation or things like that. He was a little socially awkward, to be honest, and the suffocating reminder that he'd have to live with a complete stranger starting today had been the reason for his cigarette just prior. Hopefully he'd get lucky and end up with someone like himself.

Eventually, Matt hauled himself out of his car and slung his backpack over his shoulders, freeing his hands up so he could grab his other bags and carry them in with him. He left his TV in the car for now though. There was no way he was going to try and juggle that up stairs and whatever else while carrying other bags as well so he locked his car and began in towards the building. The area was busy with students moving in and meeting friends and such, but Matt kept his mind on his mission and repeated the number of his room over and over again in his head as he followed signs and tried to find his way. When he'd finally found it, he was on the second floor and nearly halfway down the hall. However, the door was already open so he could only assume that he, unfortunately, was not the first to arrive and would now have to awkwardly make his entrance.

When he brought himself to make that entrance and set his eyes on the boy inside, he was partially relieved and partially nervous.

The nervousness was simply his social anxiety of the situation that had decided to stick around, while the relief was spawned by the fact that this blonde boy seemed to definitely not be a total weirdo or an intimidating beefcake. Matt's two main fears. In fact, this boy seemed to be alright. About the same size as he was, long hair (which sent dozens of plausible stereotypes racing through Matt's mind), casual clothing like himself, and… a rather attractive cat-like presence that caused a thrill to go through Matt's chest and make him look away. He breathed a heavy laugh in response and grinned, setting down his heaviest bag near the assumingly-unoccupied dresser.

"Hey."

Mello's eyes had flicked up from his phone the moment he noticed someone enter the room and when he heard the humble tone of the greeting he smiled in response. Thank God… he was even cute, but the fact that he seemed to be _normal_ was what was most important to Mello right then. Shaggy, deep auburn hair and casual clothing. Expressive face, relaxed posture… the way he carried himself seemed to be almost awkward but Mello assumed it was perhaps just due to the circumstances. Regardless, he was happy with who he ended up with. For now, at least…

"Yo." He replied, pausing for a moment before speaking again. "I'm Mihael, but friends call me Mello."

"Aiight" Matt replied. There was one thing they had in common already… they both seemed to not go by their first names. He spoke as he sat down on the bed left for him, setting his laptop bag next to him. "I'm Matt. ...I don't know how to have a roommate, so..." He joked, laughing afterwards and moving back on his bed to make himself a bit more comfortable for the time being. Jokes were how you made things less awkward, right? 'Mello' laughed with him, so he felt a bit relieved.

"It's cool. I don't either." He smiled again and brought his legs up onto the bed, crossing them as he looked over at 'Matt'. It was still pretty early in the day… he had no idea what they were supposed to do until bed and there wasn't class until after the weekend… maybe he'd just walk around campus and check things out. First though, they should get moved in.

"Do you have anything else to bring up?"

"Ah- yeah just my TV"

Mello parted his lips slightly at the mention of the TV, then laughed a bit. "Looks like we have two TVs then." Matt seemed just as surprised but held up his hands a bit as if to propose an idea, though he laughed as he spoke.

"Shit, well… that's totally fine dude, we can just…" He smiled and glanced around the room a bit before looking back to Mello, "I can just use mine or the smaller one or whatever as like… a computer monitor or just use it for games or something. Two TVs is _not _a problem." He was actually a little grateful, to be honest. This way they wouldn't have to share a single TV between games and Netflix or whatever. Besides, he'd always wanted to try hooking up his TV to his laptop but it had been such a hassle before. "How big is yours?"

"24-inch"

"Cool, mine's 22 so that solves that." He was nervous and talking a lot, but he realized it and tried to slow down, bringing a hand up to rub at his face. Before he could say anything else though, Mello spoke up.

"How do you wanna set up this room then? I figured I'd wait before I tried to figure anything out." He laughed, looking out towards the room and trying to piece furniture together in different ways in his mind. They definitely wanted to have enough space…

Matt hummed a bit in response and looked out towards everything as well. He hadn't had much time to really look anything over and at first glance it seemed to be alright how it was… but, he figured there was probably a much better way of doing it. He had a friend who started college last year in another city and he'd visited the dorm once or twice, so he had a few ideas as far as freeing up space goes. The dressers were pretty short and could be stacked on top of each other and that'd give a good amount of room right off the bat. He sucked on his teeth a little as he thought.

"Well…" He began, hesitating for a moment before continuing. "I have a friend who like… stacked the dressers up, so… we could do that and that'd give us some more room?"

As Matt spoke, Mello listened and mulled the suggestion around a bit. He hadn't even thought about stacking them… they were pretty small, weren't they? It'd probably be easy. He nodded and agreed, making a few comments to mirror his thoughts before adding some of his own possibilities regarding the desks and such. They talked it over and worked things out together, almost as if solving a puzzle. It was still a little awkward, of course, since they weren't much more than strangers… but they both stood up and got to work on moving things around soon enough. Once they were finished with everything around fifteen or twenty minutes later, the room looked much better. Throughout the next couple weeks or so they would probably adjust things, but for now it seemed good for them both. Mello's bed remained in its original place, but Matt's was now turned so the two beds formed an 'L' shape against the corner and walls with the foot of Matt's bed near the head of Mello's. One of the desks sat against the wall at the foot of Mello's bed and they planned to put said blonde's TV on it and angle it roughly towards the adjacent corner so they could both see it clearly. Matt's desk was positioned on the opposite wall but down closer to the door, jutting outwards towards the center of the room rather than parallel to the wall. The redhead had spoken up about how he had a habit of staying up a little late sometimes on his computer, so they arranged things where he would be facing the beds and the screen of his laptop wouldn't be too bright if Mello was trying to sleep. The dressers were stacked atop one another and placed against the wall in front of Matt's desk to even up the clutter of the room and in the end, the room had_ significantly _opened up and they now had a fairly large area of free space in the center of the room.

Matt sighed in relief and looked at the room. He'd taken off his hoodie and discarded it on his bed at some point when they'd been moving things around and now stood in a black and rust-colored Tshirt and his baggy black skinnies, his sunglasses still resting atop his head. Mello hadn't changed since they'd begun and was simply dressed in a muted teal Tshirt, though a little more fitted than Matt's, and grey skinnies.

"I'll go grab my TV"

Mello let out an 'okay' and waved Matt off as he began walking towards the door, but then mentioned his plans as well. "I guess I'll get mine too." He laughed softly, but waited a few moments until Matt was definitely gone before he headed out to his own car so they wouldn't have to awkwardly walk with each other to the parking lot. He liked Matt a lot as far as roommates go, but he still wasn't sure about conversation topic. Besides, they'd have all weekend to do nothing but find things to talk about when they were in the room together.

Eventually he'd made it back to his car and he unlocked it, grabbing another fairly large bag out of the back seat. He slung the strap over his shoulder and pushed it behind himself, leaning into the back seat again to carefully tug out his TV. It was thankfully pretty thin so it wasn't all that hard to carry and he propped it against his car so he could close the door again and lock it. Afterwards, Mello lifted the TV once more and headed back towards the dorm building. He assumed Matt was already back inside but he didn't exactly rush since the TV was a little awkward to carry even if it wasn't heavy and he definitely didn't want to accidentally drop it on the steps. That'd be an absolutely terrible first day of his college experience. However, he eventually got it back to the room and like he'd suspected, Matt was already inside and plugging in his own TV.

After they'd both gotten things set up, Mello laid down onto his bed with a sigh, resting his arms up over his head. Matt was currently busy putting clothes away in his dresser (which was now the top dresser of their stacked-dresser combo) and unpacking other miscellaneous things such as his laptop, game consoles, and whatever else he had. Mello didn't really care much.

Though, now that they were finished unpacking for the most part… should they find something to do?


	2. Spiderhead

Jeeze said I was gonna update once a week and here I am a month later with a short chapter haha. Sorry! It's short and kinda.. eehh but I honestly just wanted to get this chapter out of the way so I could time skip a little in the next one and really get things started haha.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

They had eventually decided to take a walk together around campus and eat lunch in the dorm's food court.

Admittedly, Mello was going to do that by himself anyways but decided to invite Matt along with him. Matt was much more willing to go than he thought he'd be, but maybe that was a good thing. He'd rather they be friends than not, considering coming back to a room every day to someone he didn't even know on a basic level would be sort of uncomfortable. He was going out of his comfort zone a little, to be honest, but logically thinking it was best to do this now while neither of them had any friends rather than trying to establish a friendship later on after they'd both branched out to different groups. Right?

Matt on the other hand was sweating bullets. He should have turned down the offer and just stayed in the dorm. He didn't have an exciting life and thus didn't really have much to talk about so he had no idea how he'd keep any sort of conversation going. On top of that, it wasn't like he could just make up some excuse to leave and never see Mello again; they shared a dorm. He breathed in deeply as they walked nearly side by side down the stairs and towards the main entrance of the building. It was rather noisy and busy with the other students around so they didn't say much which didn't bother Mello, but it made Matt nervous. Was the silence awkward? Should he say something? What should he say? He sighed and then opened his mouth slightly as he tried to find something to say. However, Mello beat him to it.

"So what's your major?"

Major? Of course; what an easy subject. Why hadn't he thought of that?

"Ah- Computer Programming." He paused briefly to gauge Mello's reaction. "Messing around with game programming too, but yeah." He wanted a cigarette.

"Oh, cool. That explains all your like…" He smiled as he tried to think of the words. "games and computer stuff, to be redundant."

Matt laughed in response and nodded. "Yeah… I'm pretty lame, computers are all I really got going for me. What's your major?"

Mello laughed as well and shrugged. He didn't really think that being into computers or whatever was lame- he sure as hell wasn't that knowledgeable about the actual codings of computers so he didn't exactly have room to judge on the subject.

"Philosophy."

"Sounds smart."

With another soft laugh, he tried to explain. "Not really. It's basically just… using logic to understand and question why things are how they are." Matt raised his eyebrows. "I might take some Psychology classes too."

"So you like to know how people work, huh." The redhead summarized. This guy seemed like he was probably a lot smarter than himself, even if he tried to play it off like he wasn't. He didn't seem like he was one of those 'smart-guy' buzzkills though, so it didn't look like it'd be a problem to live with. Besides, that sounded like something that might be interesting to hear about sometimes. He liked that sort of thing too, but definitely not enough to major in it.

"Yeah, pretty much. Some really interesting ideas can come up if you just look at it a different way."

Matt agreed but stayed quiet afterwards. The conversation had been mostly exhausted and he wasn't too sure what to say next. He didn't feel so awkward when he was actually talking about something, but the down time between topics were killing him. His urge for another cigarette was steadily rising and after a moment of internal conflict, he decided to bring it up. They were outside, after all.

"Hey, do you mind if I smoke a quick cigarette?"

Mello quickly looked over at him, having been caught a bit off-guard by the question. He hadn't expected Matt was a smoker, but to be honest he assumed most people he met didn't smoke so it was almost always a surprise when people proved his thoughts otherwise. He'd never smoke cigarettes, but he didn't mind when others did.

"Nah"

"Thanks"

A relieved smile made its way onto Matt's face and he quickly retrieved his pack of cigs and lighter from his back pocket, tapping one out into his hand and then putting the case back in his pocket again. Though, before he fully took his hand away from his pocket he seemed to remember something. "Oh, do you smoke?" He should have offered.

"No" Mello laughed a bit and waved a hand dismissively. "I don't smoke cigarettes."

Matt raised his eyebrows a bit at the way the reply was phrased and his thoughts momentarily flashed back to one of his previous possible stereotypes he'd placed on the blonde when he'd first laid eyes on him. He nodded a bit and put the cigarette between his lips, quickly lighting the other end and taking a deep drag as he slipped the lighter back into his pocket. He brought his hand to his mouth once again and held the cig between his knuckles, dropping it and his hand down casually next to him while he breathed out the smoke slowly. He already felt more relaxed, but his curiosity got the better of him.

"Do you smoke at all?" He asked, glancing over at the other boy. "Like weed or something?" Good job Matt, make it as awkward and blunt as possible.

If Mello thought he was surprised before, it paled in comparison to this moment. He wasn't exactly shocked by this new assumed information, but he hadn't expected to be asked straight-out if weed was something he partook in. He… didn't smoke, no, but that didn't mean he might not try it if it was offered to him. Back at home, he had friends who smoked and all his life he'd been so against the idea that as his outlooks and opinions on things had begun to change, he was too prideful to admit it to the friends he'd chastised. He was more accepting of it now and even willing to perhaps try it himself, but he'd never be able to ask his friends. He knew they'd mock him or call him hypocritical. However… he wasn't with his friends now. Matt didn't know anything. Maybe if he offered it, he could actually accept without feeling like he was being ridiculed for his decision. Then again, he didn't even know if Matt smoked for sure- his question could have just been curiosity.

"Eh… nah, I've never done it before."

Matt simply nodded, giving a short word of response. He wanted to press a little more and ask a few more questions on it, but… decided not to. He'd just met the guy today and didn't want to go too far on the subject in case it made the other boy uncomfortable or something. After taking another smoky drag of his cigarette, he looked around the area and squinted his eyes. Campus was so big… he wondered where his classes would be. Thankfully his earliest wasn't until eleven so he'd have plenty of time to get lost while trying to find it.

The two walked around for an hour or two, checking out what kinds of things the Student Union had to offer as well as the buildings where their actual classes would be. They learned that they had a couple classes in the same place, though not at the same time, and that Tuesdays would be hell for Mello since everything was so spread out. Outside of their exploring, they'd found more things to talk about -school related or not- and had generally been getting along fairly well. After checking out the food court in their dorm, they decided to find a place to eat downtown instead since neither seemed to be a fan of how large the crowd had been.

"So do you live here or is this your first time here too?" Matt asked as they walked. He supposed it was a little stupid of a question, considering Mello _was_ in a dorm but conversation was conversation.

"No but I did visit once."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah" Mello replied, running a hand through his hair and pushing it back over his head a bit as they walked side by side. "I saw a concert here last fall. Haven't been back since then though."

"Sweet." He wondered what band the blonde had come to see. Or… pop star? Matt glanced at him. No, he didn't seem like someone who'd go to a concert like that. He pushed his sunglasses back up onto his head as he felt them start to slide down and when they stopped and waited to cross the street, Matt glanced at the boy once again. "Who did you see?"

Mello shrugged nonchalantly. "Ah.. Cage the Elephant" He sometimes felt a little weird when he talked about his tastes in music since they were often so broad and different from what other people liked and from each other. When he caught sight of Matt's expression, he breathed a laugh and tried to explain. "They're like…"

"Nah nah I got you… 'Spiderhead', I know." Matt reassured with a smile, laughing afterwards. That wasn't exactly the band he'd expected, but after a moment of thought he supposed it didn't really seem too out of place. "Were they any good?"

Mello smiled, happy that Matt had said a song other than the usual 'Ain't No Rest For The Wicked' because it meant he probably actually liked the band. At least a little, maybe.  
"Well… let's just say they're a little better on record than live." Matt laughed loudly with a bit of an 'ah' mixed in. That was unfortunate.

As the light changed, the two crossed the street and headed further downtown. There were many restaurants and shops around and after a brief discussion prior, they'd decided to find something fast and easy instead of a sit-down place. It was cheaper and even though they didn't say it, it would feel a little more casual. They were still just acquaintances after all and sitting down together somewhere seemed that it might be too awkward or intimate. However, Matt was at least feeling much more comfortable now than he had at the beginning of the day and on top of that, he was starving.

Luckily, they were talking almost like friends by now and so Matt didn't worry too much about how the rest of the night, or weekend, would go.


End file.
